84 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



respect from that which we protect in green houses and stoves " 

 (p. 430) . The Mimosa sensitiva, he beheves, is "as admirable, 

 and more charming than the celebrated Humble plant, equally 

 chaste and fearful of the hasty touch of the surprised admirer " 

 (p. 24). His reaction to color is dramatic. One morning, he 

 narrates, he was " struck with surprise at the appearance of a 

 blooming plant, gilded with the richest golden yellow." Upon 

 examination it proved to be a new species of Oenothera, " per- 

 haps the most pompous and brilliant herbaceous plant yet 

 known to exist " (p. 406) . He notes the scandent fern, " a 

 delicate plant, of a yellowish lively green," which " would be 

 an ornament in a garden " (p. 478) ; the " flaming azalea " ; the 

 " incarnate Robinia "; and the " snowy mantled Philadelphus " 

 (p. 336). 



The trees, shrubs, and flowers which Bartram describes do not 

 always appear in his landscape individual and isolated. The 

 naturalist isolates his objects for scientific study and description. 

 But Bartram is an amateur traveler as well as a naturalist, and 

 his description has poetic connotations. His objects come to him 

 merged with the landscape as unbroken impressions, before he 

 proceeds to dismember them for scientific classification. Thus 

 his trees, shrubs, and flowers often come to him in forests and 

 groves and fields and meadows, and he describes them from the 

 outside, as it were, before he approaches them and the forest 

 is lost in the trees that stand out. He notes the high forests as 

 he sails up the St. Johns and they present to him " a grand and 

 sublime appearance, the earth rising gradually from the river 

 Westward, by easy swelling ridges, behind one another, lifting 

 the distant groves up into the skies " (p. 90) . The orange 

 groves, which he sees everywhere in the lower South, hold a 

 special interest for him; he mentions them again and again. 

 Other fruit trees attract him: olive, almond, fig, peach, prune 

 (p. 337) . He exclaims at the frequency with which he comes 

 upon groves of dogwood. " During a progress of near seventy 

 miles," he says, " there constantly presented to view on one 

 hand or the other, spacious groves of this fine flowering tree, 

 which must, in the spring season, when covered with blossoms, 

 present a most pleasing scene" (p. 401). His impressions of 



